Sugar and Spite (9 page)

Dirk gulped and stared at the closed door several seconds, took a deep breath, and said, “Are you coming with me?”

“All the way, buddy. All the way.”

* * *

But Savannah didn’t go with Dirk all the way… or, for that matter, even part of the way. The moment they walked through the door into the reception room—which didn’t make visitors feel all that welcome with its cold gray walls and even colder metal folding chairs—they were met by a less than jovial party of department brass. An impatient, cheerless Lieutenant Jeffries was there to greet him, along with the newly promoted Detective Jake McMurtry and Police Chief Norman Hillquist, one of Savannah’s least favorite people on God’s green earth.

In a more honest, less emotionally charged moment, Savannah might have admitted, at least to herself, that Norman Hillquist was one of those classic, tall, dark, and handsome types. But, hating him as she did, for kicking her off the force some years back, she preferred to think of him as the creep in the black designer suit and unimaginative white shirt with the generic maroon tie.

Oh, yes… and she liked to picture him and his mundane clothing tumbling head over heels down a long flight of concrete steps… with a pit full of hungry Mississippi gators at the bottom. Somehow, she found the image comforting.

She shot Hillquist a dark look and received one in return. Mentally, she sent him the silent message, “Up yours, sideways, with a poison ivy bush.” She saw the curse register behind his eyes. But old Norman was cool. He looked away as though she no longer existed… too inconsequential to warrant any further attention.

Jeffries, on the other hand, wasn’t about to ignore her. “What are
you
here for?” he demanded of her. “Coulter doesn’t need a baby-sitter.”

She took a step toward him, and she could see that he had to fight the urge to step back. She grinned. “You were the one who ordered me to bring him over here, if I recollect our telephone conversation. And you asked so nicely, with the pretty please and all, that I just couldn’t resist your charms.”

Jeffries glanced at his expensive scuba watch and scowled. “You’re more than an hour late.”

“Really?” She looked genuinely surprised, batting her blue eyes and giving him a coquettish grin. “I thought we were twenty-three hours early. You did say tomorrow, didn’t you?”

“Don’t get on her case about nothin’,” Dirk interjected. “It was me chat held up the works.”

“What matters is that you’re here now,” Hillquist said in the flat monotone that gave Savannah the creeps. The last time she had heard him use that tone, she had lost her job and one of the most vital parts of her life.

The chief walked over to Dirk, and Savannah saw the glint of a pair of cuffs in his hand. No, he wasn’t going to…

“I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Polly Coulter,” he continued in that lifeless voice as he pulled Dirk’s hands behind him and snapped the cuffs in place around his wrists. “You have the right to remain silent…”

“You’re cuffing him?” Savannah said, shaking her head in disbelief. “You’re arresting him and adding insult to injury by putting cuffs on him? He’s a cop, for heaven’s sake. He’s one of the good guys. What are you doing?”

Even as she spoke the words, a quiet, less emotional, voice inside her head told her that if she’d had the unpleasant duty of arresting Dirk Coulter for murder, she would have cuffed him, too. The guy was known for having a temper and getting a bit physical when he felt he was being treated badly.

But for some reason, Dirk wasn’t reacting much at all. He simply stood there, stoic, accepting his fate. Strange behavior for the fellow who roared with rage if McDonald’s gave him a hamburger instead of his double cheeseburger, skimped on his super fries or put too much ice in his Coke.

Dirk had never had a problem defending himself before. Usually, his demeanor was that of a cranky bulldog. This wasn’t the time to lie down, roll over, and play dead like an obedient cocker spaniel.

Savannah waited for Hillquist to finish his Miranda litany; then she jumped in, feet first. “Lawyer up, buddy. Don’t say a word until you’ve talked to Larry Bostwick. Call him right now.”

She turned to Hillquist and Jeffries. “He gets his phone call now! Right this minute! He’s calling his attorney, and he doesn’t have anything to say until then.”

“I think you’d better get out of here, Reid,” Hillquist said, his previously lifeless shark eyes lit with a strange light. Savannah recognized unadulterated hate when she saw it. “You drove him here. Your job’s done. Now get lost.”

Savannah gave him a sickly sweet smile. “And you, my beloved former chief, may go to hell in a handbasket. You’re arresting Dirk prematurely, and you know it. The only reason is because the press has already decided he’s guilty and with your mayoral election coming up, you want to look good in print. The best thing for you and the department was to prove that your fellow cop was innocent. But since you couldn’t do that in five minutes, the next best thing is to prove how tough you are, willing to take down one of your own if necessary. That plays pretty good, too, huh?”

Jeffries walked over to her and placed his hand around her upper arm. He squeezed her biceps and she was mildly satisfied to see the slight look of surprise cross his face. She had inherited Granny Reid’s stout physique. Her biceps were better than those of most guys she knew.

“You heard the chief,” he said. “Time for you to go.”

“Take your hand off me, and I’ll leave,” she said, imitating Hillquist’s deadly quiet voice.

He did, quickly, and she turned to walk to the door. She paused, hand on the knob, and looked back at Dirk. More than anything else he looked tired… absolutely exhausted, empty, defeated. “Call Larry Bostwick,” she told him. Then she gave the chief and the lieutenant one of her snottiest, nanny-nanny-boo-boo looks. “Never mind. I’ll call him for you. From my cell phone in the car. He’ll be here in ten minutes.” To Dirk she added, “Don’t say anything. Not a word, you hear me?”

Dirk nodded. It wasn’t much, but she had a feeling he had heard her and, even in his compromised mental/emotional state, she believed he understood.

“It’s been lovely, gentlemen,” she said as she passed out the door. “But I have a few calls to make… and I should have a word or two with the press before I leave.”

“You watch what you say, Reid,” Hillquist called after her, all pretense of nonchalance gone. “You’d better not—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, and your mother looks like she fell outta the ugly tree and hit every limb on the way down.”

* * *

Savannah decided not to say anything to the reporters after all, figuring a simple “no comment” was best under the circumstances. But the moment she got into her Camaro, she whipped the cell phone out of the glove box and dialed Larry Bostwick, attorney-at-law. The caped crusader, a defender of the underdog, a criminal’s last hope and an innocent man’s best friend.

In other words, Larry was a crooked defense lawyer who smelled of stale cigarette smoke and wore a bad toupee and rumpled polyester suits. But he was a damned good liar… just the sort of guy to have on your side of the courtroom.

“Larry, Savannah Reid here. Have you heard about Dirk Coulter’s problems?”

“Heard about it on the radio this morning when I was driving to the office. Does he need me?”

“You have no idea how badly.”

“Have they arrested him?”

“Cuffed and rights read,” she said with a sigh. “Get down here to city hall lickety-split, would you? He’s in a weird frame of mind, and I don’t know what he’ll say or do that would make his problems worse. And they’re bad enough already.”

“How bad? How does it look for him, Savannah?”

“It’s bad. He’s in up to his eyeballs. Hurry.”

Summer meetings of the “staff” of the Moonlight Magnolia Detective agency were conducted beneath Savannah’s rose arbor in her backyard, with pitchers of fresh lemonade and iced tea, or beer and wine coolers if everyone was officially off duty. The attendees usually wore shorts, T-shirts, and sandals… except for Ryan Stone and John Gibson, who came a bit more presentably attired in fresh cotton shirts and linen slacks.

But the winter weather of February called for a seasonal change of menu and wardrobe. Mugs of steaming Earl Grey tea or Irish coffee, hot chocolate with lots of whipped cream, or the occasional whiskey toddy warmed the guests who had changed to long sleeves, as the temperature frequently plummeted to a bitter, bone-chilling seventy-three degrees, rather than the standard seventy-six.

Whether the dead of winter or during a midsummer dream, the group usually enjoyed these gatherings of minds, ideas, personalities, and resources, pooled to solve a particularly puzzling case.

But this time, the mood wasn’t so festive, because one of their members was noticably absent. And even though Dirk could be a sand burr on the back of everyone’s britches from time to time, they all liked him… whether they would openly admit it or not.

Savannah and Tammy, Ryan and John lounged on comfy chaises beneath the arbor, discussing Dirk’s predicament while consuming mug after mug of tea that Savannah had scented with cloves, cinnamon sticks, and slices of lemon and oranges. An array of fresh-from-the-oven, heart-shaped, pink frosted sugar cookies was displayed on a large delft platter—Savannah’s token gesture of celebration for the upcoming lovers’ holiday. The very fact that the pile of sweets had been sitting there for five long minutes showed a couple of things: One: Her guests were too upset to eat. And two: Dirk Coulter wasn’t present to inhale them like a Hoover vacuum cleaner. Savannah missed slapping his hand and telling him to behave.

John took a sip of his tea, closed his eyes for a moment to savor the experience, then fastidiously brushed a drop from his perfectly trimmed mustache. “So, Savannah, we are at your disposal, my dear,” he said with his deep, theatrical, British accent. “Please tell us how you would like us to proceed in helping this unfortunate compatriot of yours.”

Savannah looked from him, the regal silver fox, to an anxious Tammy and an infinitely attentive Ryan. Dirk’s situation was grim, to be sure, but with players like this on his team, maybe he had a chance that was a wee bit bigger than the infamous “no chance in hell.”

“It’s going to be hard to go after the killer,” she said, “with no more than we have on him at this point.”

“Dirk didn’t get a good look at him?” Tammy asked, as she sat, literally, on the edge of her seat, a pen in her hand, a pad of paper on her lap.

“No. He said he ran into the living room, saw Polly lying on the floor, bleeding, saw the guy for a half a second, and then realized he was holding a gun… his gun. From that moment on, Dirk says his attention was on the gun, getting it away from the guy, it going off while they struggled for it… him dropping it, then picking it up again and running after the intruder, who, by that time, was long gone.”

“But he saw him for that half a second,” Ryan said. “What can he tell us?”

“Caucasian. Medium height, medium weight. Brown hair.”

“Light or dark brown?” John asked.

“Medium… of course. He can’t say about the color of his eyes.”

Tammy sniffed. “Probably medium brown. What was he wearing?” Savannah grinned. Tammy was always the clothes-conscious one. She was even concerned about what criminals wore to the scenes of their crimes, and frequently she had opinions about the suitability of that attire.

“Dirk said he thought he was wearing a white T-shirt and blue jeans, black sneakers, no coat or hat. But, once again, he was thinking about Polly and the gun. I don’t think he was at his all-observant best under the circumstances.”

“Did they find any fingerprints?” Tammy asked, scribbling on the pad on her lap.

“I don’t know. I’m going to pay Dr. Liu a visit; she’s performing the autopsy this afternoon. And I’ll check with the crime-scene tech. But I’m not expecting much in the latent-print department. Dirk is pretty sure the guy was wearing some sort of thin leather gloves.”

“Medium brown, I suppose,” Ryan said dryly.

“As a matter of fact, that’s what he said.”